


Words Written on Wings

by just_a_dram



Series: Words [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Denial of Feelings, F/M, Jealousy, Love Triangles, Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:13:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24043420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/just_a_dram/pseuds/just_a_dram
Summary: The content of this message has earned the old saying: dark wings, dark words. Jon Snow has picked a wife for himself.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Sansa Stark
Series: Words [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1734373
Comments: 6
Kudos: 100





	Words Written on Wings

**Author's Note:**

> Jaime x Sansa fic written for @storey1. Thank you for your donation to help fight Nazis!
> 
> Request: continuation of Words Written in Steam
> 
> This is two years old, but I realized I'd never posted it to AO3! Oops.

The sweet soft sound of Sansa’s high harp echoes in the chill of the corridor in which Jaime leans, arms crossed one over the other. Sansa once told him that the harp was one of her weapons. While that might be the case—it skewers him in place well enough—he has heard those who play with more skill. Lady Leonette, her first teacher, while proficient and pleasant enough, was not Prince Rhaegar returned. Knowing it is Sansa’s head bowed alongside its golden frame, however, lends an allure to the playing that few could duplicate in Jaime’s estimation. It draws him in. Fixes him to the stony floor.

The only thing that might improve upon her glissandos would be the accompaniment of her voice. She rarely sings, but the beauty of her sad voice can cut as keenly as any blade. That is her true weapon. He's savvy enough not to confess it.

Listening to her fingers pluck the taut strings from just beyond her sight is by nature a fleeting pleasure. For when he makes his presence known, she’ll put her instrument away for the night. She plays either in solitude or for company, and he is something else to her. She doesn’t think to entertain or win him over, as she does the others: there is no need. But he is also not yet some fading piece of furniture readily ignored. They both can rattle the other, when it suits them to attempt it. He'd have grown bored if that were not the case, and then where would he be?

Jaime tries to recall the song without the benefit of the words sung over it, but as soon as he thinks he’s caught a thread, she misses a note, two, and the music stops. Without yet turning the corner, he can picture her elegant white hands pressed flat to the strings, dampening their ring. Her face will be pinched with annoyance, drawing her finely arched brows down. It isn’t like her to make a mistake. Not on the harp, nor on any other field she commands, and yet tonight, she was not herself long before her notes went astray.

Something has unsettled her. Something disturbs her practiced calm enough that Jaime debated whether he should have refrained from his nightly practice of stretching out before her hearth to stare into the flames. Custom overcame his hesitation. That and the fear of the emptiness he feels, when he is left to his own devices. Those long nights when she must see to those more important than him in this new world order reverberates with voices lost forever, the past washing over him as relentlessly as the tide. If he wandered free of her, he would be lost. He would drown.

His good hand wraps around the thick frame of the door, as he dips his head through its entrance, clearing his throat to announce his presence. She ought to have a guard posted. It is a well-worn argument between the two of them.

_Why should I have need of constant guard, when a lion stands beside me?_

To protect us from each other, an honest man would admit. He is many things, but not that.

She lifts her gaze to him, and he swallows at the pull of her lower lip through her teeth. How long was it before vague attraction, a sort of detached appreciation for all that she is turned into this clawing hunger?

“You’ve been listening long enough to know I’m in need of practice.”

“Were my footfalls that heavy?”

“Just a wager,” she says, letting the harp rest back flat on the floor, as she stands.

Sansa’s intuition is honed sharply enough that she could make a real menace of herself at the gaming table, should she ever take it into her head to indulge the pursuit. Indulgence of any kind is not her practice, however. _Ned Stark’s daughter indeed_.

“But yes, I heard. A disastrous effort to be sure,” he says with a slow grin.

If she would give an inch, he would be lost. It is her caution that keeps him in check. He is half a man at best, though the loss of his hand was not the cause like he once suspected. Nature made him this way: strong in body, weak in character. He is at best the reflection of others. Choosing the right mirror is the real trick. He hasn't always hit the mark: Ser Arthur Dayne for a time, his sister, now Sansa Stark. His honor, the thing he sought so desperately, is only hers reflected back.

She hums her assent at his assessment, though she knows he teases, and gestures at the two chairs before the hearth. It is an invitation he scarcely requires, as he strides to take his place beside her, but she is nothing if not courteous. It gives them a script to follow, which he appreciates. Knowing one’s role is half the battle.

“You might wish you’d sought out better company tonight, ser. It’s not only my playing that suffers if that weren’t yet plain.”

Even on her worst day, Jaime has known poorer company. Certainly less beautiful company. Less quick. Less gentle. It is she that is forbearing of his moods more often than not, so he can afford to be tolerant for once.

“Will you ask what is amiss?” she asks, as she sinks into her chair and rests her head against its high back, turning her lash shadowed eyes on him.

Crossing his ankle over his knee, he watches the light play over her unlined face, tracing the slope of her nose, her cheekbones, the bow of her lips, consuming every detail to sate himself. This is how they wile the hours alone, trading verbal intimacies and looking. It is only in the attendance of others that he ever dares touch her, freed from constraint by the safeguard of their presence.

Kneeling at her feet with both hands good and false balanced on her things, he could ease away that careworn look she wears.

The silence between them beats with the pulse of the blood in his veins, not yet sluggish with wine, watered down though it often is in spite of spring having come. Thriving vineyards are not the most pressing need of a thawing Westeros. _Shame_.

Giving up on his ever prompting her for a reveal of what ails her, she lets her head roll towards the fire with a purse of her lips. “A raven brought word today. Jon has arranged a marriage. For himself.”

His gut twists.

Just as Sansa’s giving of Winterfell to Jon Snow to serve as a poor substitute for herself brought Jaime no real joy, he feels no thrill in this announcement. If she’d gone with Jon to the North, he could have put aside this attempt to be someone he fears he’ll never quite manage to be. The mummer’s act could be dispensed with and there would be some relief in that, he suspects.

Though Sansa will never admit it, Jaime can’t even claim victory over the dour faced bastard. He knows he is not Sansa’s first choice anymore than she is his. It is circumstance that has thrown the lion and the shewolf together and formed them into a two person pride or pack.

If anything, he feels trapped. Like a hare in a foot soldier’s snare. He has nowhere else to go. Nowhere and no one left to him. And yet, this woman deserves more than he is equipped to give.

He runs his hand over the plush fabric covering the left arm of his chair. The fibers give under his touch and spring back, as he asks flatly in a mimicry of bored disinterest, “One of the Mormonts?”

“The daughter of that hedge knight Daenerys raised up in High Garden.”

Jaime snorts. The men elevated in these days aren’t fit to sit at the same table with the likes of Tywin Lannister, much less hold a great house. He supposes his brother thinks it helps his queen consolidate her power to surround herself with loyal upstarts.

“She’s a child, is she not?”

Her narrow shoulders lift and fall. “Older than I was when Daenerys made land.”

“A child _and_ a Southroner.”

That is like to irk Sansa more than the girl’s age. She is wary of all Southroners, and with good reason given what she endured at their hands. His family’s hands. He does penance for that, keeping his hands to himself, when he would like to run his good one over her smooth skin.

“Yes. It’s not what I was expecting from Jon.”

“You’re… disappointed in his choice then?”

It isn't that. The choice isn't the problem, which they both know. But she'll dance around the truth as prettily as she does when music is played for company, and he'll watch until he decides to force her hand. Advance, retreat, advance, retreat.

“No,” she says, her eyes narrowing as her lips curl into something approaching a smile. “It makes more political sense than I gave Jon credit for.”

“How astute. That hedge knight’s wife was a crofter. A finer match was never made.”

“That doesn’t matter now,” she says with a wave of her hand. “Daenerys favors these new families. She’ll be pleased with his choice. And Jon prefers a simpler woman, I think. It might suit him.”

He lifts his brows at her. “This message appears to have earned the old saying with you. Dark wings, dark words. What is the source of your upset then, if he has chosen so wisely, pray tell?”

She refuses to turn her attention on him, staring fixedly. Never will she admit what she really feels for her bastard brother, and while he taunts, the last thing he truly wants is an admission from her.

No, it isn't the truth he seeks. Jaime seeks assurances of his place here. With her. If he is a rabbit, he’s sought the warmth of her lap. There was no real need of snares.

And so, with his place threatened by the disturbance of her peace, he rattles the shewolf's cage.

“I own I am surprised in his choice. Your brother demonstrated rather more refined preferences in women when last we saw him. More appreciation for those he’d call family too.”

That finally rouses her. Its an icy glance as cold as any Northern winter she casts his way.

He’d rather she be full of wrath than sullen, so he presses harder, contentedly settling deeper into his chair, as he extends a boot towards the fire. “Shall I arrange an assassination? Solve both your problems once and for all?”

“Don’t jest.”

“Was I?”

She exhales slowly as if in exacerbation. “Sometimes I don’t know with you, ser.” She reaches across the space and trails her fingertips over the linen of his shirt. His hairs respond, standing at attention in the wake of her touch. “But don’t you dare.”

“I’d do it for you, my lady,” he says, voice laden with the heavy weight of his vow. And perhaps he would. He’s done worse. He’d experience some conflict perhaps, but not enough. “And then your honorable Jon Snow would come for my head.”

As surely as if he’d just spoken of what he might do with his cock in the privacy of her bedchamber, her cheeks color. She’s a bold thing, when she wants to be, however, and her hand finds his, slender fingers slipping between his sword calloused ones.

He still practices. Every day. Giving vent to frustrations he can't work out elsewhere.

“No, I wouldn't want that. I wish Jon and his bride every happiness.”

He would laugh at the absurdity of her statement if the tension in his chest permitted it.

He curls his fingers in, squeezing too hard in his rising desperation to hold tight to what seems as if it is slipping away. Even as obstacles are removed from his path; even as Sansa's choices are confirmed for her through the actions of others.

“Of course you do. Your concern for his happiness was most evident when you sent him away, trading him a kingdom in payment for your refusal of him.”

She didn’t choose Jaime, but he would accept her claiming she did, plying him with some prettily worded lie here alone with her hand in his. He could live off that lie.

Her fingers dig half-moons into his palm. “Jon does not always know what is best for him.”

“And you do?”

She normally does a better job of obscuring that she believes she knows better than anyone else. Men do not like to be so blatantly managed. Most men. Jaime finds it easier to submit. Just a touch of artifice will do, and he'll accept the bit like a well-broken horse.

“Yes. His parentage doesn’t change what was. My father was his father. He needed to believe in the meaning of his Targaryen blood, but Jon and I are both Starks. Not Targaryens.”

“Nor Lannister.”

“We can’t always silence our hearts, but we can choose what’s right.”

It is not a romantic girl’s notion. She sounds like a septa, though she drags her nails along the palm of his hand. Her self-righteous Stark moralizing might cool his ardor if he didn't think stripping a septa’s veil from her coppery locks wouldn't have its own appeal. Jaime always appreciated playacting.

“Well, he lacks a sense of humor and fails in conversation, but I cannot fault him for his taste.” Neither for wanting Sansa nor a sister. “Best wishes to them both, I suppose.”

She gives her head a tired shake. “It’s all for the best.”

He turns his hand upright, letting her settle hers into his, fitting as if it was meant to rest there, though a different shade, not of the same blood. “Sounds practically medicinal.”

“Not all tinctures are loathsome.”

“But I can be plenty odious. Can you stomach the cure?”

She clicks her tongue. “You still think so highly of yourself, ser? To imagine you might save me?”

“Didn't I?”

Pulling their clasped hands free of the arm of his chair and in to her breast, something dances in her eyes. Something other than the reflection of the flames. Something perhaps freed by a raven’s message.

“Yes, like in a maiden's dream. Unfortunately, I am aware of your more questionable qualities, ser.” Tilting her head down, she kisses each knuckle in turn. Each wet press of her lips quickens the beat of his heart. “A maid and a questionable knight.”

“The songs never celebrate those who did what was best for them.”

And while a Southron upstart might be just the thing for a lovesick bastard prince, Jaime wonders at Sansa’s skills at deception—even self-deception. Can it extend so far as to make her believe him a salve for what ails her?

Perhaps no more a wonder than his desperation for it to be so. Jaime Lannister, rescuer of maids. Honorable knight. Keeper of vows.

“Imagine how dull it would be if they did,” she says, drawing the tip of her nose over his knuckles. “But they might sing of the wolf and the lion. Mightn’t they?” she asks, blue eyes wide with eagerness for his avowal.

What choice does he have? Without her, nothingness awaits. Worse than nothingness. The roar of the past, waiting to swallow him whole.

She holds the breach. She is his source of sanctity, sanity, his savior.

“They might.”


End file.
